[p2p-research] Fwd: [ox-en] Apple trees (aka capitalism) are bad. What about barter exchange?

[Michel Bauwens]

comments and critiques on this barter project are welcomed by the author

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Evgeni Pandurski <epandurski at gmail.com>
Date: Apr 23, 2009 11:05 PM
Subject: [ox-en] Apple trees (aka capitalism) are bad. What about barter
exchange?
To: list-en at oekonux.org

[Converted from multipart/alternative]

[1 text/plain]
I am currently working on a P2P system for extended bartering. I almost
have finished the design of the system and have done a toy implementation of
one of the subsystems. I plan not to release any code in public until I have
most
of the design frozen. I believe this is going to prevent the project to be
spoiled down
by too much design and philosophical discussions. Anyway I am open to
discuss
technical details with anyone who is interested in the concrete design and
implementation. Let me try to briefly explain the general idea:

The biggest problem with money is that it basically introduces artificial
scarcity of one
particular good - the money itself. All the other problems are a logical
consequence from
the mentioned problem - interest, fiat money, credit. Barter exchange does
not have this
problem because it does not introduce any scarcity that have not existed
before. The
only problem with barter is that it does not works when a wide variety of
goods are traded.
This is called "double coincidence of wants" which spoils things down. So
basically barter
would be nice if it worked at all (but it does not).

I propose a kind of generalization of barter which I call "Circular Exchange
Trading System" or
CETS. The ordinary barter is a special case of circular exchange of goods
where there are
only 2 participant in the exchange. General idea is that lots of people
declare what
they have for sale and what they seek to buy and the computerized system
offers them
appropriate circular barter transaction. Details are not important at this
level of abstraction.
What is important here is that "double coincidence of wants" problem
disappears because
the guy you deliver what you have and the guy you obtain what you need form
are different.

If the thoughts above are true. Is seems that such a system once implemented
and widely
accepted would free exchange from any dependency of centralized institutions
(or at least lessen
this dependency greatly). The previous statement is obviously too
enthusiastic. It is very
hard for me to deduce all the drawbacks this approach to trading (CETS)
certainly has. I would
be glad to hear from you all possible critiques of the idea I presented to
you.


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-- 
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